John Naputi; phony SF operator

A smaller percentage of Americans served in the military in the 1980’s than during Vietnam.

So I’ll stand by my statement. 😉

I’m pretty sure the failure rate is below 50%, maybe as low as 25% but I’m not sure. I was a support puke (intel), the tabbed SF guys would know better than me.

The whole reason SFAS was to reduce SFQC (Special Forces Qualification Course) dropouts. Sending a soldier through SFQC costs the Army a LOT of money and if a soldier fails SFQC that money goes down the drain.

As I said, I’m still curious about that redacted entry below the SFQC. Makes me wonder if he got bounced for disciplinary reasons, beat his wife, came up hot on a piss test, or something similar.

I can’t remember how long the 18E course is but IIRC it was one of the longer courses because proficiency in morse code is required.

There’s another factor, too, that makes me think he may have been booted for some kind of disciplinary or honor code infraction: I have heard 2nd hand that when the Army sends soldiers to the Q course after SFAS, they intentionally “overstaff” the tougher 18 series MOS’s (that would be 18D -medic – and 18E, communications) by sending more soldiers into the pipeline than they actually need in that specialty – the idea being that if a soldier fails academically out of one of the tougher courses, they can recycle him into an “easier” MOS (relatively speaking, since nothing in the SFQC is “easy”) like 18C (demolitions) or 18B (weapons.)

After all, by this time they’ve already completed SFAS, and usually Phase I, so it makes sense to try and keep the soldier in the SF community if at all possible.

So if Naputi failed academically out of the 18E course, it seems likely he would have been recycled to 18B or 18C. The fact that they didn’t may point out to this not being an academic failure, but something else – possibly an injury or illness, but also possibly he was booted for misconduct or “peered out” by his fellow students.

Also as far as the “steps” go, at this time, in the early 1990’s, the training pipeline would have looked like this: First, SFAS. This is 3 weeks long and is usually called “selection.” Once a soldier is “selected” he is given a class date to start the SFQC. Then there are the 3 phases of SFQC. Phase I is the basic combat skills phase – similar to Ranger school. This is where SF soldiers learn the basic fieldcraft skills they will need. Then comes Phase II. This is the MOS phase, where each SF soldier learns his specific specialty: 18B (weapons), 18C (demolitions and engineering), 18E (Communications and 18D (medic.) The medic course is the longest and at this time could take 18 months to 2 years to complete (it usually included a “residency” at a hospital dealing with trauma patients and of course the infamous “goat lab.”) The last phase was Phase III, which was an exercise that had each soldier apply the skills he had learned in the school. Only after completing that phase was he given his green beret and tab (though I should point out that up until 1993, all personnel in SF Groups wore the green beret regardless of qualification – I still have mine from 1st SF Group where I served from 1990-91.) Some time in the late 80’s – early 90’s, a language school requirement was added. This was based on the specific SF Group the soldier was assigned to. 7th Group would learn Spanish or Portugese, 5th Group would learn Arabic, 10th would learn German, Russian or some other Eastern European language, 1st Group would learn Korean, Thai, Chinese or some East Asian language, and 3rd Group would usually learn French, Portugese or some other language common in African nations. Then there was SERE: Survival Evasion, Resistance and Escape. I had heard that SERE was being put in as a requirement for the Q course but I don’t know if they ever actually implemented that rule. When I was in, an SF soldier usually didn’t get assigned to SERE until after… Read more »